No Flame But Mine

by Tanith Lee

  Gaining the tower’s foot Fenzi paused, looking it over, up and down. Before he did this however he glanced back again. The panther cats were no longer to be seen.

  As he perused the tower structure, its ponderous yet oddly familiar stonework, he heard a terrible noise from deep inside it. Fenzi had had second-hand experience of reiver fights along the Jafn shore, and first-hand of mishaps of the voyage with Arok to the new continent. He had been there during the pig-hunt and its aftermath, Winter the godforce hunting them. Fenzi knew a cry of agony when he heard one.

  Was he startled? No. Or startled only by the inevitability of this doomed quest’s conclusion.

  Death was in the tower. Vangui the rending she-wolf, the moon’s cruellest, thinnest quarter: a claw.

  After the ghastly cry there was an interval, less than a minute. Then other cries were heard. They varied in loudness and in tone, even in intensity. Yet all were comparable in that they were grunts, howls and screams of shock and intolerable pain.

  Fenzi was sure every cry was voiced by a different man – none was not male. He found he had started to count them, somehow also including the number of those uttered before his count began. Every one went through him like a blade. When he had, or thought he had, counted over seventy cries, he pounded up the last of the slope and in at a tall slot he discovered in the stones. It was unlike a doorway, reminding him more, if he had considered it, of an enormous keyhole.

  Inside stretched a space, roofless. High in the vault of it nine minor moons made patterns, passing, repassing.

  Fenzi felt like a child. How old was he after all? Three – five – seven – nine?

  He had known himself an adult man. Now this was cut from him. The urge to curl up tight on the stone floor was very insistent. He drew his sword.

  Then Vangui entered the space from another chamber or another world.

  How fearsome she was.

  She had clad herself, over her physical blackness, in white mail, and a dark cloak trailed from her to the ground. Her head was shaven. Fenzi could not see her face. Instead there was a gleaming mottled redness, the kind of marks that might show on the moon’s face during an eclipse – which he had never witnessed but been told of, or somehow divined. In her narrow hand too was a sword of whitest steel.

  No use to battle with her. She was more powerful than a god; she was his source, the First Mother. And what man could slay his mother? Damn her then, this seef bitch from the guts of a rotten moon. Let her have him. He threw down his sword. When it hit the stony floor it shattered. Symbols, when very trite, often wound the worst.

  Through him life beat in a flood, bearing his true parents, bearing Arok and Nirri, bearing Sombrec the lover, and even the tiger baby he had given to Curjai – and then blankness, more horrible than the trance the great cats cast, for he was not helpless, could move and operate his body, and yet was powerless as a man whose every bone had been ground to mist.

  They saw her, most of them and all of them essentially, in a dissimilar form. To Guriyuve and Sallus for example, standing together, she had appeared rather the same. Yet her colourless dress was of a differentiated style for each, her unseen face was, for each, unseen in an unlike way. Fenzi saw her as a warrior goddess, hairless and defeminized. Among the rest of the Children of Chillel, she was visualized as seventy or eighty – more, more – other beings.

  Some even watched a dual creature approach, partly masculine and partly female. Some gazed on a giantess, or a monster from their own personal set of myths – Fenzi was not alone among the Jafn-raised to compare her to a vampire. Two of the Chillelings from the Faz calculated her a shark-woman, but in either instance a different shark. Several Rukarians saw her in the image of one of their plethora of gods, the malign side always … To some she entered that desert of space as a panther that walked upright, with a woman’s breasts and genitals flaring silver, as did her teeth, eyes and talons.

  That was a constant, however. The talons.

  The number of the Chillelings had never been certain. Somewhere between thirty and one hundred men? One was absent, of course – Dayadin, born son of Arok. And two were daughters – Brinnajni, Azula – and neither of these currently in the tower, and one not now to be in the tower. But all the men had either entered there, or been dragged there, or would enter or be dragged in. And time naturally in the fastness of a god, as in the otherworlds, had slight meaning.

  She steals towards them individually and all, with the tread of dawning night upon an isolated island. Though already in the dark, her dark is final.

  Even where two or four had grouped together, as had Sallus and Guriyuve, she draws close and then no other is by, no other exists. The whole earth is only himself and her.

  She is not Chillel. But nor is she Winsome either in name or type. She is Vangui. They all grow aware that she is Vangui, and those who had guessed achieve a second depth of understanding that she is Vangui. Vangui of the Claw.

  When she is very near the musk of the animal or creature she appears to be, or the perfume of the woman she appears to be, smothering and killing invades their nostrils, then despite the fact they are not paralysed their feet seem to have grown into the floor of the tower. Their arms lie leaden. If their hearts beat it is only like drums. If their eyes can see, and they can, it is only like mirrors.

  Vangui regards them with her own black-silver gaze. No mercy or love in it, no family feeling. Not motherly. Never kind.

  The right hand of the woman, the right forepaw of the beast, even if it is an armless serpent or a shark, springs back, a living thing in itself – and tears forward.

  Four talons that seem made of iridium score the son who stands before them. They score as if he is quite naked, making nothing of any garb – leather, cloth, metal. They score inward and down from just beneath the left pectoral to the lowest root of the ribcage. They score to the skeleton, so through the torn blackness and spurt of fiery blood the human ivory is for one split-torn second clearly revealed.

  And he screams. In all of the thirty or eighty or a hundred or more voices. Screams in agony, in affront, in horror, in misery. And the night captures each cry and stores it, files it carefully, hangs it like a jewel upon the air.

  As she steps across the last inches of turf and enters the slot-like door to the tower, Azula begins to think she is under a spell. She feels no alarm or distrust. That must prove she has been duped. But what can she do? The panther has brought her and the chaze has companioned her. But now she is alone in a vast empty hall, and above her nine white globes dance together and faintly chime.

  Azula supposes she will die here. Whatever comes at her she will loathe. And still she can experience her prospective loathing – that’s good. Thank the gods. And if she dies anyway, if there is a Paradise, her ma will be there—

  Something is gliding over the distance towards her.

  Azula focuses on it. A woman? Death.

  Chin up, brace the spine, take breath and meet death eye to eye. Azulamni is only a little girl a few years old, but when did that ever matter?

  And I hate you, you goddess of rubbish.

  Hate you.

  THREE

  Brightshade had descended from the mountains. As his non-bright shadow cascaded outward over the plain, wildlife fled to every compass point. Men, where the semi-ectoplasmic entity had passed by, took it mostly for a reflected cloud. The occasional magio had grimaced and fired off incantations. But anything non-human knew and ran.

  One other thing there had been on the plain, not animal, not human, but this was gone.

  Guri too, and the mammoths, had left the region by then. Lionwolf was sitting under an upright fan of ice sculpted at sunrise by the wind.

  Brightshade’s shade filled the world.

  ‘What nostalgia,’ said Lionwolf, looking about. ‘How well I remember all those impressive filth hills and jingle-jangle bone forests decorated with corpses on your back. Some have been jettisoned. Never mind, Brighty. You’ve garnere
d several new ones. I especially like the artistic fortress of broken ships’ masts. Besides, when I walked over you I never saw inside your guts. You have a fine collection there, too. Let me see – is that a whole shore village which you’ve swallowed? You must have sent a wave to throw it adrift.’

  Brightshade loomed. He regarded the shapes of Lionwolf’s friendly sarcasm, and picked up the regret with which Lionwolf also judged the wanton slaughter such a ‘collection’ involved.

  ‘Forgive me,’ shaped Brightshade. ‘Brother – forgive.’

  ‘It’s done. No doubt I can’t persuade you to give it up.’

  ‘I will,’ sprayed the shapes, inaudible but deafening, ‘do anything! Only forgive what I have done to you.’

  ‘To me? I have forgiven it. You helped me. Didn’t you know? Death and Hell were my anvil.’

  Tears rained from the stained-glass palace windows of the leviathan’s eyes.

  Reaching the snow they sizzled, leaving oval slushy places, each about the size of a shed.

  ‘He persecutes and harries me,’ shaped the whale. His agility with language had been got from multifarious meetings. Perhaps its dramatic tone was inevitable. Most of the ones he had heard using words were dying in terror because of him. ‘Save me from the father – save me, brother! I will be your slave. I will serve you. There is none but you.’

  A particularly valid tear splashed out an oval the size of a cottage. They were not corporeal, the tears, yet had the force of sincerity. Until this moment Brightshade had been partly acting, to win Lionwolf’s favour. But suddenly the script overwhelmed him. Now he wept like a sea.

  Lionwolf began to speak soothingly to Brightshade in a kind of melodious gibberish. It was rather as mothers spoke to infants. Brinnajni, Lionwolf’s daughter, had done something like this before, when she lulled the whale asleep and rescued Dayad from his stomach. Lionwolf could see the scar this rescue had fixed even on Brightshade’s astral body. If the whale had ever grasped how he was robbed was unclear. But the chastisements of their father, Zth, were also plain enough.

  Only too well did Lionwolf recall his own anguish of fear in pre-infancy when he had been threatened by Zeth Zezeth.

  With his phrases and voice, Lionwolf reassured his half-brother. The plain beamed about them. It was, perhaps, the one lying just below the southern mountains. They were therefore in Kraagparia, Brightshade and he. What was real was unreal, what was unreal, real.

  ‘Forget your awe and fear of Zeth,’ said Lionwolf at last. The shapes of these words swam deep into the consciousness of the whale. ‘His day is done. His power is going out. I am the power now,’ said Lionwolf, without modesty, arrogance, amazement or unease. ‘Trust me, brother. He can never hurt you again. If he draws near you, say my name to him.’

  ‘Lionwolf,’ whisper-shaped the whale. It was a sigh like a sea wind far inshore.

  ‘And call to me,’ said Lionwolf. ‘Then watch the old dad run.’

  Miles off over hills of ground and time, Guri heard his nephew’s laughter behind him and the more oceanic mirth of the whale. Guri scowled, guessing, knowing, all that went on. That bloody whale had impaled him – twice. Forgive? He would thump the thing when next he met it. Or not. Maybe not. But then anyway Guri saw Sham again before him down a sort of swirling tunnel. Sham by night and goldworked with ten thousand torches. And it had grown bigger, and the temple of Gurithesput had grown much bigger. And Guri galloped forward, his scowl now like thunder at seeing this urban sprawl.

  Jemhara had been left to her own devices for a long while. At least so it seemed. She had tried to reckon up the days, but as there was never really any night here, only a brief flicker of evening which seemed to occur as and when it wanted to, her estimate varied.

  The god ignored her as a rule. This she had become used to. Also that having ignored her for what seemed several months, he would abruptly seek her. He always manifested from the golden air. Or out of a tree. Something like that. At first she believed that was simply what he did, a habit, a foible. Then she began to suspect he did it to discompose or thrill her.

  Why should he think that necessary? He was Zeth Zezeth.

  She asked herself if she attempted to make sense of her own incarceration here, his prize or experiment, by inventing flaws in his psychology.

  Yet the Magikoy training she had inadvertently attained insisted to her Zth was no longer quite himself. That is, not what he had been in mythology or temple-lore. He had gone downhill.

  His constant boastful references to destroying her in the sexual act, and how he would not; his diatribes against the Rukarian state, mankind in general, other gods – Yyrot, Ddir, the one he called a doy, Saphay – and so on. These were like the rantings of the angry and enfeebled, unable to lash out with anything but temper and tongue.

  As for the main anathema, Lionwolf, Zth now seldom mentioned him coherently. Nor did Zth command Jemhara to any of the unspecified tasks of vengeance he had suggested. Of this she was glad. Yet she drew a conclusion.

  Her instinct had already compared her celestial jailer to the aged King Sallusdon.

  Those wasted limbs, wilted loins, crass, conceited and unfunctional mortal brain – to make such a comparison was risky, surely. Zth could read her mind if he wished. But, he did not …

  Here he was now, extracting himself from an orichalc column.

  Jemhara obeised herself.

  ‘Ah, get up, get up.’

  It was Sallusdon! That foolish and inappropriate glee at her gestures of slavishness.

  And his golden gaze on her was like that of a man not merely unintelligent but – senile?

  They strolled in gardens of iridescent leaves.

  Zth recently seemed to like to see things that approximated earthly fauna, preferably killing each other. And so the glades were frenzied with sapphire wasps seizing ruby spiders, or vice versa, and cobalt wolves with auburn cats in their jaws. It was illusory but unneedful and sickening.

  Was this too his own vitriol having to be performed by others?

  ‘What will you do for me, Jema?’

  ‘All and anything, supernal lord.’

  ‘Yes. You do love me so, do you not, my Jema?’

  ‘Lord, more than all and everything, what else?’

  And off he went then on a rant. And after the rant he gave an outline of what he might do with and to her. The one he always gave.

  When he brushed her lips with his finger a shiver of impossible bliss consumed her. She allowed herself to collapse at his feet. He enjoyed this.

  He enjoyed – this.

  And he credited her fawning lies.

  Later once, just once, Jemhara bit the inside of her mouth to prevent a yawn.

  When he buzzed away she sat motionless. The blink of twilight disrupted the sky. It seemed to her that it lingered many seconds more than previously.

  That he could read her thoughts was still feasible. Jemhara cared less that he should finish her than that he might make her harm others, particularly Thryfe. She had forged her own plans for suicide in whatever format seemed workable, should that finally happen. It would go against her life-wish which was very strong, even here. It would not be easy, but it would be done. Vuldir had used her as his puppet to be rid of Sallusdon. If any will, human or superhuman, used her now it would find her useless.

  Dusk returned. And a dusk it was. It went on for an hour, she thought. At the time Jemhara bathed her eyes and heart in its grey-blue sweetness. There were even groups of stars, and one quarter-moon, more slender than the white curve of a baby’s nail.

  She sat in his garden, and watched the raucous leaves calm to ashes.

  Somewhere a bird sang. Jemhara had never heard such a thing. Even the caged birds of Ru Karismi had not had songs. It was exquisite. She fell asleep.

  Being what now she was, sleeping she was entirely aware of her journey out of the Sun Wolf’s confine, down or out towards the earth.

  She went along a path, a milky way here and there
pasted with small stars. The larger stars were aeons off, greater than worlds.

  Unlatching a door, she stepped into the room of a mansion. She was in a mage’s towery. She had reached Kol Cataar, and the house of Thryfe.

  When she saw him, dream-projection that she was, all of her seemed to fissure like crystal at a blow. It was a blow of love.

  The magician wore lighter clothing – the climate had grown warmer here. He had posted himself before an oculum, and this thaumaturgic instrument was itself new-minted, and had a few innovations Jemhara had never heard of, let alone seen before.

  She could see too he was strong, this husband of her soul, not as when last she looked at him, either in the flesh or through her psychic eye. Jemhara read him as the god could not read her. Thryfe’s wretched deprivation of her, and how the other god, Vashdran, had healed him of illness but not of grief. He had wanted to keep his grief, it seemed. But he was himself.

  ‘Good evening, my love,’ she said.

  Yet Thryfe, awake and in the world, Magikoy though he might be, did not hear.

  Jemhara found herself close enough to embrace him. She did this, leaning her head on his shoulder while her hair poured over him.

  Curiously at that moment she felt his ring again on her finger. It was not there, of course. Oh, it is truly inside me then, inside my finger, safe about the bone.

  She wanted to tell him this, explain.

  He knew and saw and felt nothing of her.

  But in the oculum, which a minute before had been blind, a picture was painted.

  Jemhara watched with Thryfe as something black tore apart something pale under a tree daggered with ice.

  Futile as a nightmare, the magic mirror was showing him the horror of his mother’s death. Naturally, the mirror seemed to say, he had always feared to have Jemhara taken from him too. Thus, losing her, he could only accept the theft, and that the thief would be death. It had been bound to happen.